Abu Yala al-Tanukhi
- Died
- 450 AH
- Born in
- -
Abu Ya'la al-Tanukhi (d. c. 450 AH / 1058 CE) was an Arabic prosodist and philologist, best known for his treatise on Arabic poetic meter and rhyme, al-Qawafi (The Rhymes) .
Name and Identity
Abu Ya'la is identified in manuscript records as Abd al-Baqi ibn Abd Allah al-Tanukhi, and in some sources as Ibn Abi Ya'la al-Tanukhi . His nisba, al-Tanukhi, connects him to Tanukh, a confederation of Arab tribes historically settled in Bahrain . While standard estimations place his death around 450 AH, another chronological report places his death close to 488 AH (c. 1095 CE) .
Prosodic Method and Reception
Al-Tanukhi composed a specialized treatise on the science of rhyme titled al-Qawafi (also transmitted under the title al-Qawafi fi ilm al-arud) . In the work, he evaluated established prosodic and grammatical authorities directly against poetic usage . For instance, in his discussion of al-ridf (the vowel letter preceding the rhyming consonant), he addressed the stance attributed to Sibawayh—and also cited by Abu Bakr al-Khazzaz al-Arudi—which held that placing a short open vowel (fathah) before the letters waw and ya was impermissible in that position . Al-Tanukhi contested Sibawayh's strict prohibition, noting that poets had in fact employed that construction, and supported his objection with poetic citations .
Manuscripts of al-Qawafi have survived in historical collections, including the Zahiriyya Library in Damascus . The text has received multiple modern scholarly editions, including one edited by Umar al-As'ad and Muhyi al-Din Ramadan (Beirut, 1970) and another edited by Awni Abd al-Rauf (Cairo, 1975 and 1978) .
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List of Works
al-Qawafi (The Rhymes) is a classical Arabic treatise on the science of poetic meter and rhyme (ilm al-qawafi). The work presents a systematic examination of the technical rules, phonetic components, and structural variations of Arabic poetic rhyme.